Timpson Review

DfE should update statutory guidance on exclusion to provide more clarity on the use of exclusion. DfE should also ensure all relevant, overlapping guidance (including behaviour management, exclusion, mental health and behaviour, guidance on the role of the designated teacher for looked after and previously looked after children and the SEND Code of Practice) is clear, accessible and consistent in its messages to help schools manage additional needs, create positive behaviour cultures, make reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010 and use exclusion only as last resort, when nothing else will do. Guidance should also include information on robust and well-evidenced strategies that will support schools embedding this in practice.

To ensure AP schools can attract the staff they need, DfE should take steps to: ensure AP is both an attractive place to work and career choice, with high-quality staff well-equipped to provide the best possible academic and pastoral support for the children who need it most. DfE should consider ways to boost interest in and exposure to AP through new teacher training placement opportunities in AP; better understand and act upon the current challenges with the workforce in AP, by backing initiatives to support its development, in particular focusing on making sure there is action taken to develop and invest in high-quality inspirational leaders in AP who have the capacity to drive improvement across the school network.

Alongside measures to improve the quality of AP, PRUs should be renamed to reflect their role as both schools and places to support children to overcome barriers to engaging in their education.

DfE should invest in significantly improving and expanding buildings and facilities for pupils who need AP. As a priority, DfE should carefully consider the right level of capital funding to achieve this, for the next spending review.

The government should continue to invest in approaches that build multi-disciplinary teams around schools, and should identify any capacity concerns and work across Departments to ensure that schools are supported and work productively with all relevant agencies, including Health and Social Care.

DfE should make schools responsible for the children they exclude and accountable for their educational outcomes. It should consult on how to take this forward, working with schools, AP and LAs to design clear roles in which schools should have greater control over the funding for AP to allow them to discharge these duties efficiently and effectively. Funding should also be of a sufficient level and flexible enough to ensure schools are able to put in place alternative interventions that avoid the need for exclusion where appropriate, as well as fund AP after exclusion.

DfE should look carefully at the timing and amounts of any adjustments to schools' funding following exclusion, to make sure they neither act as an incentive for schools to permanently exclude a pupil at particular times, nor discourage a school from admitting a child who has been permanently excluded from elsewhere.

Ofsted should recognise those who use exclusion appropriately and effectively, permanently excluding in the most serious cases or where strategies to avoid exclusion have failed. This could include consistently recognising schools who succeed in supporting all children, including those with additional needs, to remain positively engaged in mainstream in the context of a well-managed school. Within the leadership and management element of the judgement, Ofsted should communicate their expectation that outstanding schools have an ethos and approach that will support all children to succeed while accepting that the most serious or persistent misbehaviour, which impacts on the education and safety of others, cannot be tolerated.

DfE should work with others to build the capacity and capability of governors and trustees to offer effective support and challenge to schools, to ensure exclusion and other pupil moves such as managed moves and direction into AP are always used appropriately. This should include training as well as new, accessible guidance for governors and trustees.

Local authorities should include information about support services for parents and carers of children who have been, or are at risk of, exclusion, or have been placed in AP, in their SEND Local Offer. DfE should also produce more accessible guidance for parents and carers. In the longer term, the government should invest resources to increase the amount of information, advice and support available locally to parents and carers of children who are excluded or placed in AP.

Governing bodies, academy trusts and local forums of schools should review information on children who leave their schools, by exclusion or otherwise, and understand how such moves feed into local trends. They should work together to identify where patterns indicate possible concerns or gaps in provision and use this information to ensure they are effectively planning to meet the needs of all children.

DfE should set the expectation that schools and LAs work together and, in doing so, should clarify the powers of LAs to act as advocates for vulnerable children, working with mainstream, special and AP schools and other partners to support children with additional needs or who are at risk of leaving their school, by exclusion or otherwise. LAs should be enabled to facilitate and convene meaningful local forums that all schools are expected to attend, which meet regularly, share best practice and take responsibility for collecting and reviewing data on pupil needs and moves, and for planning and funding local AP provision, including early intervention for children at risk of exclusion.

DfE should publish the number and rate of exclusion of previously looked after children who have left local authority care via adoption, Special Guardianship Order or Child Arrangement Order.

DfE should consult on options to address children with multiple exclusions being left without access to education. This should include considering placing a revised limit on the total number of days a pupil can be excluded for or revisiting the requirements to arrange AP in these periods.

DfE should review the range of reasons that schools provide for exclusion when submitting data and make any necessary changes, so that the reasons that lie behind exclusions are more accurately captured.

DfE should use best practice on managed moves gathered by this review and elsewhere to enable it to consult and issue clear guidance on how they should be conducted, so that they are used consistently and effectively.

DfE must take steps to ensure there is sufficient oversight and monitoring of schools' use of AP, and should require schools to submit information on their use of off-site direction into AP through the school census. This should include information on why they have commissioned AP for each child, how long the child spends in AP and how regularly they attend.

To increase transparency of when children move out of schools, where they move to and why, pupil moves should be systematically tracked. Local authorities should have a clear role, working with schools, in reviewing this information to identify trends, taking action where necessary and ensuring children are receiving suitable education at their destination.

Ofsted must continue its approach set out in the draft framework and handbook of routinely considering whether there are concerning patterns to exclusions, off-rolling, absence from school or direction to alternative provision and reflecting this in their inspection judgements. Where it finds off-rolling, this should always be reflected in inspections reports and in all but exceptional cases should result in a judgement that the school's leadership and management is inadequate.

In making changes that strengthen accountability around the use of exclusion, DfE should consider any possible unintended consequences and mitigate the risk that schools seek to remove children from their roll in other ways. This should include: reviewing a 'right to return' period where children could return from home education to their previous school, and other approaches that will ensure that this decision is always made in the child's best interests; consider new safeguards and scrutiny that mitigate the risk of schools avoiding admitting children where they do not have the grounds to do so.

Relevant regulations and guidance should be changed so that social workers must be notified, alongside parents, when a Child in Need is moved out of their school, whether through a managed move, direction off-site into AP or to home education, as well as involved in any processes for challenging, reconsidering or reviewing decisions to exclude. DfE's Children in Need review should consider how to take this forward so children's social care can best be involved in decisions about education and how best to ensure a child's safety and long-term outcomes.

Real-time data on exclusion and other moves out of education should be routinely shared with Local Safeguarding Children Boards and their successors, Safeguarding Partners, so they can assess and address any safeguarding concerns such as involvement in crime. This should include information on exclusion by characteristic.

DfE should ensure there is well-evidenced, meaningful and accessible training and support for new and existing school leaders to develop, embed and maintain positive behaviour cultures. The £10 million investment in supporting school behaviour practice should enable leaders to share practical information on behaviour management strategies, including how to develop and embed a good understanding of how underlying needs can drive behaviour, into their culture. It should also facilitate peer support, where school leaders have the opportunity to learn from high-performing leaders who have a track record in this area.

The government's £200 million Youth Endowment Fund, which is testing interventions designed to prevent children from becoming involved in a life of crime and violence, should be open to schools, including AP. This will enable the development of workable approaches of support, early intervention and prevention, for 10 to 14 year olds who are at most risk of youth violence, including those who display signs such as truancy from school, risk of exclusion, aggression and involvement in anti-social behaviour.

DfE should extend funding to equality and diversity hubs (an initiative to increase the diversity of senior leadership teams in England's schools through training and support for underrepresented groups) beyond the current spending review period and at a level that widens their reach and impact.

To support the school workforce to have the knowledge and skills they need to manage behaviour and meet pupil needs, DfE should ensure that accessible, meaningful and substantive training on behaviour is a mandatory part of initial teacher training and is embedded in the Early Career Framework. This should include expert training on the underlying causes of poor behaviour (including attachment, trauma and speech, language and communication needs, among others), and strategies and tools to deal effectively with poor behaviour when this arises.

To ensure designated senior leads for mental health and Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators (SENCOs) are effective, DfE should: review the training and support available to SENCOs to equip them to be effective in their operational and strategic role as SEND leaders; ensure the training designated senior leads receive includes a specific focus on attachment and trauma.

DfE should strengthen guidance so that in-school units are always used constructively and are supported by good governance.

DfE should establish a Practice Improvement Fund of sufficient value, longevity and reach to support LAs, mainstream, special and AP schools to work together to establish effective systems to identify children in need of support and deliver good interventions for them. The fund should support effective partnership working to commission and fund AP and enable schools to create positive environments, target support effectively and provide the opportunity to share their best practice successfully. This should include developing best practice on areas including: internal inclusion units; effective use of nurture groups and programmes; transition support at both standard and non-standard transition points and across all ages; approaches to engaging parents and carers; creating inclusive environments, especially for children from ethnic groups with higher rates of exclusion; proactive use of AP as an early intervention delivered in mainstream schools and through off-site placements.

DfE should promote the role of AP in supporting mainstream and special schools to deliver effective intervention and recognise the best AP schools as teaching schools (and any equivalent successors), and actively facilitate the sharing of expertise between AP and the wider school system.